


Only when I lose myself

by Lothiriel84



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-07
Updated: 2012-09-07
Packaged: 2017-11-13 18:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lothiriel84/pseuds/Lothiriel84
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It’s only when I lose myself in someone else / That I find myself / I find myself" (Depeche Mode)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only when I lose myself

He loathes playing the boy wonder at the carnival.

Yet his father won't allow him to quit. He knows that.

If only his mother were still alive he wouldn't have to con people for a living.

But his mother is no more, her warm smile lost forever to the world.

He doesn't love his father – rather fears him, if anything – and is pretty sure that his father doesn't feel much affection for his only child.

Alone. Lonely. Empty. That's how he feels during the long sleepless nights, as they travel all over the Midwest.

People constantly glide in and out of his life – most of them strangers who only expect him to show his extraordinary psychic powers.

When he falls asleep at some point near dawn all he dreams about is running away.

…

She's exactly the one he's been looking for through all of these years.

Angela is just like the sun, and the wind, and the cool spring rain.

She makes him feel alive. Happy. At home.

He's sure he could lose himself in those beautiful smiling eyes.

He _wants_ to lose himself in her eyes.

Sometimes they manage to sneak away from the carnival and lie down together on a quiet meadow.

There he kisses her until her soft lips finally take his breath away.

…

He falls in love with his daughter the very moment Angela tells him she's pregnant.

Making love to his wife feels different now there's a tiny life growing in her belly.

When Charlotte is born he knows that his heart is stolen forever.

He kisses the gorgeous baby girl again and again, and watches her sleeping for hours.

Angela teases him about it, saying that she's just lost her husband to another woman – although so very young.

He just doesn't care.

…

The night he comes home to find a note on his bedroom door and a red smiley painted on the wall his perfect little world crumbles to dust.

He wants to die, but death simply ignores him.

It doesn't matter how hollow and broken he is – he just has to carry on.

The single purpose that drives him now is finding the man who murdered his reason for living. Then he's going to cut him open and watch him die slowly like he did with his wife and child.

Only after that he will surrender to darkness.

…

Red John is gone. He can't believe that.

The first weeks are nothing more than a blur.

He lies on his couch and Lisbon brings him tea.

She strokes his hair and says that everything is going to be alright.

Her eyes never leave him. Warm, caring eyes – and he finally gives in to their unspoken promise.

It's late one night when he snuggles into her embrace and simply surrenders.

The moment he gets lost in her affectionate smile is the moment he finds himself once again.


End file.
